Unintended consequences come about when a change, believed to improve the current situation, actually makes the situation worse. That these changes are often well-meaning only adds to the irony of second-order effects. One source of new problems is the substitutions made when replacing the status quo.
As I’ve started to research famous second-order effects, several of the famous historical claims (like the one that follows) seem to be “just so” stories. The claims are too simplistic. There is just one change and just one result. While these stories make for a memorable explanation, without more detail, we just miseducate ourselves on second-order effects.
Let’s look into the well-known claim that because of the Temperance Movement, people stopped drinking alcohol, but then started to drink “ether”… and died.
Temperance Movements of the 1800s
(A detailed (and pro-temperance) list of various temperance movements is here.)
I had heard about the Temperance Movement leading to an increase in ether bingeing of all things, but I never understood the connection until writing this piece. And I have doubts about the second-order effect claim.
If you’re wondering, ether is diethyl ether. You can make it by distilling ethanol and sulfuric acid (which interestingly used to be known as vitriol). Ether is not something that you’d drink for the taste. Apparently, it both tastes and smells awful, which is why many ether recipes call for adding sugar, fruit, and spices.
But back to temperance movements.
There were other movements before his, but the award for fast growth goes to Father Theobald Matthew, who established the Total Abstinence Society in Ireland in 1838. The estimates are that half of Ireland’s population had taken Fr. Matthew’s alcohol-free pledge by just 1844. That is, The Pledge wasn’t about drinking less alcohol, or even just not drinking to the point of drunkenness. The Pledge was a commitment to complete abstinence from alcohol. With a large population and extreme adherence (if that was true), we have a potential setup for a scale transformation. It’s just not clear what it would be.
And you’re probably wondering about that pledge. This was it: “I pledge myself with the Divine Assistance that as long as I shall continue a member of this Society I will abstain from all intoxicating liquors unless for medical or religious purposes and that I will discountenance intemperance in others.”
Earlier temperance societies were about just that — temperance — not abstinence. They allowed the drinking of beer and wine, but not hard liquor. Later on, the total abstinence pledge reflected the focus on the movement. As expected, these movements were not popular with people in the alcohol business. There are reports of brewers attacking temperance meetings. The movement also spurred a growth in “temperance halls” as meeting spaces and dedicated facilities for teetotalers.
“The move to acquire dedicated facilities involved many temperance societies in fund-raising activities which distracted them from their core function of reclaiming drunkards and sustaining their new, abstinent lifestyle… Not all activists were convinced that dedicated facilities were desirable, feeling that the fundraising involved in providing them in the first place, and the effort necessary to maintain them, diverted the efforts of the movement away from the essential work of reclaiming drunkards.” — from ‘Try the alternative’: the built heritage of the temperance movement
Buildings originally built for the temperance movement changed in ironic ways as the movement died out. The Temperance Institute, in Keighley, England is now a pub. Investment in these buildings caused second-order effects of their own. But back to the question at hand.
I didn’t appreciate just how important it was to have places one could visit without being pressured to drink. Here’s an extreme example of how alcohol was intertwined with commerce over 100 years ago.
“[I]f only there had been some place where they might eat. Jurgis had either to eat his dinner amid the stench in which he had worked, or else to rush, as did all his companions, to any one of the hundreds of liquor stores which stretched out their arms to him… One might walk up to these and take his choice: ‘Hot pea-soup and boiled cabbage today.’ ‘Sauerkraut and hot frankfurters. Welcome.’ … There was only one condition attached, — you must drink.” — The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Was Ether a Good Substitute For Alcohol?
Short answer: yes. Now the longer answer.
For some reason, some temperance campaigners thought ether was an acceptable alternative to alcohol. I cannot find a good source for who said this and why, but if this claim is accurate, then more people started to drink ether in order to avoid breaking their pledge to abstain from alcohol. I also cannot find a good source for why there was such high adherence to alcohol abstinence (if indeed there was). But as temperance societies grew and gained in numbers, people in Ireland, UK, and the US gained locations where one could dine, socialize, and stay, all which were alcohol-free. More about this social availability later.
There were a few reasons people drank ether if they weren’t able to drink alcohol, including it was cheap, provided a faster intoxication and faster recovery (no hangovers). There were reasons that people wouldn’t drink ether if given other choices, including the bad smell and taste, but that was soon fixed by adding other flavors, including juice, fruit, cloves, sugar, cinnamon, coffee and tea. These blends continued to make ether drinkable even when producers blended in naphtha (a wood or petroleum distillate) to make the ether smell and taste even worse.
Ether was cheap. Much cheaper than alcohol alternatives, at 3s. [shillings] per gallon retail, as opposed to 20s. [shillings] per gallon for “ordinary spirits.” “For 1d. [penny] a glass of methylated spirits can be got, having greater intoxicating effect than whisky.” — from Brewers’ Guardian, Volume 21, p. 203
“A pennyworth of this vile stuff is often at first enough to produce intoxication… Its cheapness is due to the facilities that it was thought well, twenty years ago, to afford for the production of ether from methylated spirit for industrial purposes.” from Ether-Drinking In Ireland, The British Medical Journal, (Oct. 18, 1890), pp. 912-913
Ether drinkers killed or injured themselves from fire, not from the drink itself. Ether was so flammable that it was risky to drink it close to an open flame. And ether turns to gas at room temperature and so drinkers burped and farted a lot (result: explosions). The trick to even be able to drink it was to first drink a glass of cold water to cool the mouth, which kept the ether in liquid form until it hit the stomach.
I have no good metrics for how many died in these fires. Were there more than those who died from alcohol?
Ether providing an alcohol-like high while not actually being considered alcohol. That is, ether drinkers followed the letter of the law of their pledge, but not the spirit.
What I don’t understand is why people considered ether not to be an “intoxicating drink,” as prohibited by the temperance movement pledge. But people naturally developed products to fill the gap in drinking. At the time of Fr. Matthew’s movement, the entrepreneurial Dr. Kelly produced “Dr. Kelly’s Remedy,” a cure for alcoholism made from ether and marketed as “a liquor on which a man could get drunk with a clean conscience.”
Was the Temperance Movement the Main Cause of Ether-Related Deaths?
Temperance Movements are blamed too much for ether drinking.
Part of the responsibility also goes to the British government tax on ethanol. Ether was not taxed and as we saw above, was significantly cheaper. It took until 1891 for ether to be cataloged as a poison.
As noted, ether drinkers had a lot of gas. The gas (expelled in two ways from the human body) was highly flammable. If ether had become popular when fire wasn’t such an important provider of heat and light, perhaps we never would have heard about this unintended consequence.
Temperance Movements were not known for their serious study of alternatives. For example, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union started a root beer boycott in the US, assuming that the drink contained alcohol.
Perhaps these movements should have thought about filling the gap with something else for the former drinkers. While new temperance halls were popping up in many towns, what were people to do at home or at a celebration?
Ether’s Popularity Outside of Temperance Movements
Ether’s outstanding features were the small dose needed for intoxication and its low price, especially as alcohol became highly taxed. Let’s look at a country where ether drinking became common, but without the temperance pledge: Poland, a country with alcohol prohibition during WWI.
“After 1914 the provision of spirits in the future Polish territories rapidly deteriorated. During the war the Russian government introduced a prohibition. At the same time Germany and Austria-Hungary raised their taxes—the German tax on spirits rose spectacularly from 1.25 to 8 marks per litre in 1918. Facing severe food shortages, the Central Powers used administrative means to safeguard supplies of potatoes and barley by reducing alcohol production. In addition, military operations on the Eastern Front had damaged many distilleries. Under these circumstances, the consumption of ether as a substitute for spirits flourished.“
Conclusion
The Temperance Movement gets too much of the blame for ether deaths. Other causes for ether’s popularity included its cheapness, tax avoidance, and entrepreneurial product development.
There was certainly an unintended consequence of ether consumption — namely the deaths from fire. This potential unintended consequence is hard to predict and fight. The ether story comes not from a top-down decision (like in the Cobra Effect) but instead from bottom-up activities. Only later, after finally noticing, did governments try to prevent the use of ether. And when they did, their concern was more about health, smell, and class issues than risk of fire.
That’s why second-order effects are so hard to predict, identify, and remedy when noticed. Blaming Fr. Matthew and the Irish Temperance Movement is too simplistic an answer.
